


Erase (Reborn)

by uarejeff



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Day of the Doctor does not happen, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Episode: s09e10 Face the Raven, Gallifrey is not saved, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I think this turned out okay tho, I'm Bad At Summaries, Just realized I had a spelling mistake in my summary, No Fluff, One Shot, POV TARDIS, Post-Time War (Doctor Who), Time War (Doctor Who), Time War Angst (Doctor Who), angsty TARDIS, everyone dies, excessive use of commas, excessive use of parenthesis, idk if I made them too vague or not lol, idk ive had this idea for a while, im a mess, leave me in the cess pit of fanfiction to die, of course, there are a whole bunch of references in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 20:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19911637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uarejeff/pseuds/uarejeff
Summary: If she could breathe, she would laugh. If she could gasp, she would sob.Or: The TARDIS reflects on her life with the Doctor.





	Erase (Reborn)

The TARDIS does not like Clara Oswald. Not because Clara still feels _wrong_ , like time is broken around her, like she warps and distorts it into something unrecognizable. Not because the girl still calls her “it” and “machine,” either (although, that certainly doesn’t help). It’s because the TARDIS knows how it ends.  
(She always knows.)

* * *

Her memory before the war is foggy, the events blending and colliding until they’re a mess of time, of pain, of death. But she remembers the end as well as she remembers the day she stole/is stealing/will steal her Thief. 

He parks her miles from his destination, in a wasteland far from the blood stained citadel they used to call home. It hurts to be back on Gallifrey, to sit on the skin of the planet that has been washed red from war, that contains so many aching hearts and lost souls. 

_(How many children…?_ she wonders. _How many children are on this godforsaken planet right now?)_

He runs his hand over her console, shoulders sagging from exhaustion. He’s old in this life, face weathered, hair gray, and his eyes (brown this time) contain an aching sadness that suits him well. He pulls his gaze up, and stares at the time rotor. 

“We’ve had some fun, haven’t we, old girl?”

His hand slides off, and dangles limply by his side, like a dead thing that has yet to be buried. He squeezes his eyes shut, and faintly, she can hear him whisper, _“No more.”_ The words have lost their meaning, though, they’ve been twisted and broken until they’re nothing more than an empty mantra, a forgotten promise. 

(If she concentrates, she can see his family, dead, dying, echoing in his eyes, drowning in his soul.)

He leaves her, pausing to glance over his shoulder, taking in her ancient and flawed geometries, eyes sweeping her caverns like he’s looking for some semblance of happiness, like he’s looking for a future that no longer exists. She beeps softly at him _(don’t go, don’t go, don’t go)_ but, with that thing tucked under his arm, he leaves, the door swinging shut behind him, the heat from the desert briefly sweeping into the console room. 

He’s gone, and she is desperately, hopelessly, empty. 

_(If she could breathe, she thinks, she would cry. If she could sleep she would not dream.)_

She knows what happens, and she knows what he wants to happen _(For Gallifrey!)_ but she has the time vortex burning up in her heart and she is painfully aware that he does not get what he wants. The universe is not kind to her Thief. 

She can see it, the barn, him, the Moment, she can see it in the same way you can recall past events: murky, a memory that’s not-quite-there. She sees him, chest heaving, shoulders shaking, beads of sweat rolling down his face, plip-plopping into the old, dirty sand. 

It’s beautiful, in a way. Dust motes floating through the air, the sun peeking through the rafters. The reek of time, of choices, of fear. It is beautiful in the same way it is horrifying, in the same way it is inevitable. 

When he comes back, regeneration tugging at his skin, he’s quiet, won’t look at her, silent sobs tugging at his figure. When he finally does let go, finally allows himself to live on, he does so in a screaming blaze of pain, light pouring off of him in a way that reminds her of ancient suns about to die, expanding slowly as they fill their dead planets’ skies. It reminds her that the only light in a black hole is from dead stars. 

And then he meets Rose. She’s kind, she’s brilliant, she’s utterly human, and the TARDIS can’t help but love her, even though she knows how it ends, even though she knows how much it is going to hurt. She watches, helplessly, as her Thief and her _(yes,_ _yes, hers)_ Rose dance and spin and laugh towards their oblivion. 

“How long are you going to stay with me?”

“Forever.”

_(If she could breathe she would laugh. If she could gasp she would sob.)_

And then there’s Martha, and Jack, and Donna, and Wilf, and she has to watch knowingly, hopelessly, as they all leave him, forget him, as once again, her Thief is alone, whispering about leaving and want, and she thinks. 

She thinks as she watches him burn up inside of her, and she thinks that knowing what will happen is very different than experiencing it. She wonders how much more loss he can take, how much longer until his smile becomes just teeth. And she hates. She hates the universe, for torturing him so, she hates the humans, for loving him and leaving him. She hates herself, for watching, for knowing, for loving. She hates him, for choosing her, for taking her off Gallifrey, and forcing her into this wretched life of loss and love.

_(If she could breathe, she would scream. If she could close her eyes, she would not sleep.)_

Amelia Pond. Rory Williams. River Song. 

Her new Thief is happier, angrier, sadder, darker, and she watches as he laughs, cries, as he attempts to move on, to forget.

 _(The man who forgets…)_

And then finally, _finally,_ she can _see_ him, she can _touch_ him. _(If she could breathe…)_ There’s so much she needs to say. So much she needs to tell him, but it’s too much for poor Idris and she can’t fucking _focus._

Still. Still.

_(She will not cry. She will not scream. She will not sleep.)_

And so. Clara. Her Thief. (Older again, grumpier.) She hates the impossible girl because she knows how it ends, with desperate pleas for bravery on cold, cobble stoned streets. 

And so, this is how it goes: with empty promises of forever and long lasting friendships passing in a blink of an eye. With sand (from a desert or a beach, you decide), and forgotten memories. With snow on New Years and gravestones that have room for two. 

It ends with smoke. It ends with clocks counting to zero. It ends with eyes empty before the body hits the ground.

_(If she could breathe, she would cry. If she could move, she would smile.)_

This is her/his/their story.

And this is how it ends. 


End file.
